Let's All Meet Up in the Year 2000

I am currently reading China Miéville's The City & The City--to the writer of the cover blurb that says the book is the lost love child of Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler raised by Franz Kafka, I say yes, that's exactly it, and oh yes, I am loving it.  About a third of the way in so far.

Oh, and last night was SYTYCD.  ( SYTYCD spoilers )

It made it all the way down to 82 in the house this morning, so the ferrets got to come out and do their own dancing for a bit.  Happy weasels!
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We dropped off Sissy early early this morning for her deslorelin implant procedure--just heard back from the vet that all went well, and Sissy's up and stashing kibble all around her cage :-) So now we wait and see if the implant can put the brakes on her overactive adrenal glands (technically I think it will put the brakes on her overactive pituitary gland so that it will stop sending go to work signals to the adrenal glands, but it all has the same end result). The vet was also happy with Sissy's general appearance and weight. Considering how close we came to losing her last year due to her digestive issues, it's really rather miraculous. It also really makes me think I am on to something in feeling that she has a chicken intolerance, since she is doing so well on turkey-venison-lamb kibble.

In other good news department, I heard today that Karim Nagi will perform a Turbo Tabla piece at the Haiti benefit! Yay!!!

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It seems to be the thing to be doing, so my 2009 in a handful of points:

• started 2009 with my foot still in pretty wretched shape, but by Feb or March the alcohol injections finally killed off that nerve in the ball of my foot, and slowly I've come to be able to count on my feet to be there for me once again.  I still have some resculpting to do (that's really how it feels, like I am rebuilding the way my ankles and feet work) and I'm still not 100 percent pain free but I'm optimistic that to a large degree I can change what nature and nurture dealt me and have strong functional feet again.
• lost a fair amount of weight but more importantly gained a lot of strength in my legs and core.  I feel I have a lot more power in my movements now, whether it's dance or yoga or just daily activity.  I like this and I am determined to keep it.  It's hard work but it's rewarding.  On a related note, with the exception of the last two weeks or so, I've been happy with the diet I've created for myself--not diet in the sense of weight loss program, but diet in the sense of well rounded nutrition, food that tastes good and sustains me. 
  
• Danced in a variety of different venues, and in the process have been sounding out what is important to me as a dancer in terms of my goals and ideals.  Definitely a work in progress, some lessons are not always so pleasant, but it's part of being an artist.
• Lost my ferret Ianto, but that was tempered by being so glad that we were able to give him a good loving home in the evening of his life.  He was such a sweet fellow, with his little Ianto prancing walk.  And his loss meant that we were in the right place at the right time to give a home to Edgar, who is quite the endearing character and brings us much joy.  Little Sisiutl has stayed a constant, deepening her bonds with me and welcoming the new guy along with us.
• Got a Zipcar membership and started driving regularly again, for the first time since 1995 or so.  It's been very freeing and liberating, and nowhere near as scary as I thought it would be.  I've enjoyed driving a variety of different cars through Zipcar, and I've equally enjoyed not having the responsibility of car ownership.
  
• Took the kind of plunge I'd been promising myself I would do for *years* and applied for a new job which represented a step up in my career--and got it!  The whole process went so smoothly it was like a dream, and clearly meant to be.  I'm very happy in the new job, while grateful for all that I learned in the old job.  Executive Assistant may not seem like a glamorous or important sort of career, but trust me, all your companies, non-profits, universities, etc would fall down without talented and intelligent people providing structural support.
• Held Raks Spooki IV--I can't believe it has now happened four times!  I made a leap of faith that the market was still there even in this economy and moved to a larger theatre, and my faith was pretty justified.  Lots of thoughts for how to run next year's!  As always, the variety of creativity and talent on display in the show was humbling to me as the organizer.  I'm very proud to be able to put on this show.
• Bought an iPod Classic, which seems like a small thing, but I am loving it so it bears mentioning.
• Set in motion the process of renting regular studio space in a quiet place, something I have been deeply craving for a long time.  The studio is part of a small artists' community and I am excited about the synergy of that as well.
  

For 2010, I essentially just want to keep on track with the things I've been doing well.  I need to be a little better with keeping up with foot exercises.  I am really looking forward to utilizing that studio time.  We will have our tenth wedding anniversary in 2010.  I want to get out to more concerts, live music of any style that strikes my eclectic fancy.  I definitely want to travel outside of the Boston area for dance workshops more often.  I want to keep learning more about mixology, and get brave enough to start making drinks up, drinks that actually taste good.  In the end, perhaps none of those things are individually that important, but in sum they equal the process of building my life onward and upwards, improving what I can and accommodating what I can't.

Happy New Year, everybody!  May the triumphs and joys of the past year continue to sustain you, and may those you have lost live on as beautiful memories within.
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Last night I found Edgar sucking on Sissy's neck and kneading at her with his front paws, while she did her best to ignore him. It was cute yet disturbing at the same time. And definitely proof that those Marshall Farms ferrets are taken away from their mothers too early. In general they are cozy enough with each other that we're not locking him in his cage any more, and given that he hasn't been sleeping in it for several days, I think we can finally put it away. He's still skittish and easily startled, and plays a little too rough for my liking with little Sisiutl, but in general he's settled in really well. Yay!

I'm dancing at 11:30pm at the Middle East this Sunday. For once I am being sensible and making a set out of all music I have used before, with the exception of one Hakim song but if you've danced to other Hakim songs, you can dance to them all pretty much.

Looking forward to cheering on Zenyatta in the Breeders Cup Classic tomorrow. If she wins, or even puts in a gutsy show or place, this is truly the year of the filly and mare in horse racing. I'd be glad to see it. If a filly is just as big and strong as a colt, there's no reason not to run her with the colts. And if that messes with the statistics a future breeding sire is compiling to determine his future worth, then good, frankly. Racing veers too close to existing for the sake of the money that can be made in the breeding shed rather than for the sake of the competition among talented athletes. Perhaps the regular participation of fillies and mares in more races can provide a spoiler effect. Also, I am not ashamed to admit an upswell of female solidarity and pride in my heart when I see a Rachel Alexandra or a Zenyatta take on and beat the boys ;-)
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Sissy has started eating pretty normally again this morning; she's still grinding her teeth a bit but seeing her eat is a huge relief.  She drank a lot of water this morning too, which she needed.  It looks like a broad spectrum antibiotic was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Ianto, otoh, had a moderately severe seizure Friday evening, only a couple of hours after getting his meds and shortly after eating.  He's getting increasingly difficult to medicate as well.  The Lupron shot he got a few weeks ago has definitely helped him regrow his fur, but I'm worried about risking more seizures with trips to the vet for monthly shots.  Not really sure what to do about that, wondering if the vet would teach me how to administer the shots and let me buy the Lupron and do it at home.  I'm less worried about his losing hair than I am about his prostate enlarging and causing urinary obstructions.  But in general, his quality of life is still there so we hold on.  He's very happy and affectionate in his own non-cuddling way most of the time.

Yesterday I had a massage, went to Redbones for lunch and then went to my parents' house for dinner to see them and my brother and crematia13 and little nephew Timothy, who even in just a week's time is so much better at standing.  I bet it's not long before he's walking.

Dancing at the Middle East tonight, 9:30pm!  Hanging around for drinks and dancing later as well.  John's a great DJ, it's like having Garabed back again!
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• Sissy continues to do well.  Her belly was shaved for her ultrasound, and so we can literally see her tummy starting to fill out again.  Ianto is chugging along too.  Both of them were frisky and affectionate this morning, which makes it awfully hard to go to work ;-)
• Why did I never before know how awesome foundation brushes are?  I bought one recently for my stage foundation, which is rather thick and wasn't going on well with the sort of sponge I usually use, but I will now use it for my every day foundation too.
• I want to arrange my own belly dance intensive for myself by taking a week off and assigning myself a different batch of DVDs every day.  I've got all these wonderful DVDs that I never have the time to work with, and others that I'm interested in buying.  I think the only way to get to work with them is to make the time. 
  
• On a side note it is increasingly frustrating not to have my own studio space in the apartment.  Some nights I get home from work and I feel inspired to work on dance all night, but I really can't, not without exiling M from the living room, which usually means he'll play guitar in the study, but even with the guitar on headphones, the strings still make enough noise that it's really distracting and the general circumstances are enough that it makes it harder to concentrate.  It's a no win situation.
• I usually don't mention fiction books that I am reading here because I go through genre like junk food, but I came across an author recently who bears noting:  Mark Del Franco, who in his Connor Grey series writes about an alternate present in which the land of the Fae collided with the world as we know it in the 1900s and profoundly affected socio-political history ever since.  Best of all, the series takes place largely in Boston, so there's that thrill of recognizing familiar places.  There's one section about downtown in the middle of the night that is just perfect.  The Fort Point Channel area is a huge Fae ghetto in his books.  The hero is a Druid, so a Fae sort of human, who has fallen in some particular ways that I will not spoil and as a result earns his living consulting with a local cop on cases involving Fae.  It reminded me a bit of the Dresden File books, only much, much better written.  Totally recommended and I'm looking forward to reading more.
• That Ron Moore pilot-without-a-show Velocity is airing tonight on Fox.  Oh Fox, why do you treat genre so badly when it has done so much for you?
• Weeding last night in the garden revealed a hitherto unknown bumper crop of mint.  I see mint juleps in my future, say 8 or so hours from now!  I also found much parsley scattered all over the place, which is odd--it's never grown well for me, and now all of a sudden it's everywhere, even popping up between the cracks in the concrete front steps.  Tis not mine to wonder why, tis but mine to make chimichurri later this season!
• I got nuthin on the recent celebrity deaths, except to say that I am of an age where of course I wanted to be a Charlie's Angel when I grew up, so that makes me a bit sad.
  
• dark chocolate Reeces Peanut Butter Cups are evilly addictive.
• June was a month of intense extremes of good and bad.  I won't be sorry to leave it behind.
  

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After talking to the vet yesterday, we've increased Ianto's pred dosage to 3/4 the maximum dose for his weight.  I gave him the first increased dose last night.  He puttered around for a bit and went to sleep in their octopus out in the dining room.  An hour or so later, I was playing with Sisiutl with a cat dancer toy (ferrets love them too!) when suddenly Ianto was in the middle of our game, jumping and playing and clearly quite full of himself.  I kept a close watch on him while he climbed the couch, jumped off by himself and chased Sissy and me--no seizures!  He's been eating like a little horse, too.  Anyone who's been on prednisone knows that it's an appetite stimulator which can lead to weight issues, but in his case that's a very good thing, since the more he eats, the better his blood sugar will be.

It's a little sad that we're nearing the limits of what the medication can do for him, but seeing him so happy and bouncy last night almost brought tears to my eyes.  You can of course go over the dosage limits with pred, but at that point the side effects of the pred will probably start to outweigh its benefits.  However, I'd rather he had a shorter time with us the way he was last night than a longer time the way he's been for the past week.  It's what I would want, given the same situation for myself.

Sleepy.  Lots of work to do at work, lots of work to do at home.  Guess I should get at it, then.
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About 20 minutes before it was time to leave for Easter dinner at M's folks' house, Ianto launched into another seizure.  We got that one under control but he followed it up a short while later with another smaller one.  So I am staying at home to monitor Ianto while M goes to Easter dinner.  His mom is going to be pissed, but given that when M called her to say we'd be late because of Ianto's seizuring, her response was "just bring the ferret in the car," I don't really care.  It may have been her way of trying to be funny, but I'm not in the mood for funny.  (edited to add: after M arrived at his parents' house, his mom called me to say that she was sorry I won't be there but she completely understood and she would do the same in my position. I feel mollified.) It's now about half an hour after Ianto's second seizure and he seems to be resting comfortably.  We debated going to the emergency room with him, but I don't think they could have done much for him that we weren't already doing.  I've got my cab fare ready in case anything happens again, though.  I'll call the vet tomorrow morning.  Maybe we'll have to increase his pred after all.

M forgot the bottle of wine we were supposed to bring to dinner.  Maybe I'll drink it, once Ianto's been stable for a while longer.
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I am very concerned about an act that is going through the House of Representatives right now, and anybody who owns any sort of exotic pet or fish should be too.  It's HR 669, the Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Protection Act.  It sounds great in theory, protect US native environments by banning dangerous nonnative animals from the US.  But I have a few issues with this.  One is that the proposed list of allowed animals to keep as livestock or pets, as defined under section 14(D) is pretty limited--cats, dogs, cattle, chickens, donkeys, domesticated species of geese and ducks, goats, goldfish, horses, llamas, mules, pigs, domesticated rabbits and sheep.  Granted there is some allowance made for "any other species ... determined by the Secretary [of the Interior] to be common and clearly domesticated," but I'm not at all comfortable with that determination being made by a political appointee.  The astute will notice that ferrets are not on that list, despite being clearly domesticated, and I worry that ferrets suffer such bad PR that they will not be added despite the extraordinary lack of impact they have on their local environment (though the fact that they are widely used in medical research might help their case :-/ ).  The other problem is that the native environments are so different from state to state.  An animal that poses a threat to the native environment in Florida, certain reptiles say, pose no threat at all to the native environment in Nebraska.  Obviously states and territories like Hawaii and Guam have more at stake than long settled areas like the Northeast where we don't have a lot of natural native environment left.  It seems to me it would be far better to let states make their own determinations as to what animals are allowed, and leave regulating interstate commerce up to federal regulation.  Perhaps the federal government could issue recommendations about species like snakefish, that seem destructive in a wide variety of environments.

But the thing that really gets me about this is that it seems like a case of shutting the barn door after the horse has gone and already irrevocably altered the local environment.  All those animals on the allowed list are capable of causing serious damage to native environments (well, except maybe goldfish and llamas, I don't know).  Feral cats, dogs and pigs have profound impacts on their local environments.  Working for the Forest Service in California, where cattle ranchers are allowed to graze their cattle in National Forest land, I have seen first hand how destructive cattle can be to watersheds and delicate ecosystems.  The whole thing seems to be a bit of a sham to me.  Of course the environment in all its wonderful variation ought to be protected.  But this seems to say to me let's ban all the nonnative animals, except for the most destructive ones because either we love them or they are economically valuable so we'll just overlook the massive damage they do.

Anyway, I already wrote to the chair of the subcommittee that currently has this act under consideration (Rep. Madeleine Bordallo), and will write my own rep when the act leaves the subcommittee.  I hope this is much to do over nothing, but I worry. edited to add: I wrote Dr. Khuly aka Dolittler about this, and she says she'll write on it later this week. Yay!

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After having it suggested to me by a handful of people over the weekend and then receiving a coupon for one in the mail on Monday, I went out and bought a neti pot and used it last night.  It is somewhat disgusting, but I have to say my head felt a hundred times better after using it, and my congestion is close to gone now.  So I am a neti pot convert.  I honestly think it will help me stay healthier.

Bits of my calves and thighs started shaking in dance class last night.  I think my body would like me to know that it has had quite enough for now, thank you.  Tonight I'll rest.  But I'm so fired up and inspired from the weekend that I just want to dance dance dance!  There's a super funky drum solo on the CD from Yousry's workshop that I'm longing to work on, listening to it I was practically dancing in my seat on the train this morning.  And there's other songs I want to work on, and DVDs to do, and-and-and--but I will be sensible and rest up first.  It helps that Lost is on tonight.
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